Reddit reviews A People's History of the United States (Modern Classics)

a people's history of the united states by howard zinn.

I highly suggest you don't read any Noam Chomsky. E.g., Hegemony or Survival. Nor any Howard Zinn. E.g., Peoples History of the United States. Nor watch any documentaries they are in. Definitely don't do any of that. No sir.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War

Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Levitt and Dubner, Freakonomics

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. It changed the way I look at history, both American history and the subject in general. It, for lack of a better phrase, blew my mind. There's an entire history of this country that I was just never taught and never knew about until I read this book. If I could pick one book that everyone, in America at least, had to read it would be this one. It's nonfiction though, if you're specifically looking for fiction then the first thing that comes to mind is House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski.

They made an economic decision to live in a balloon-frame timber house, and not use cable ties for their roof and foundations. How should we react to people who spend more money invested on making their homes look decorative rather than sturdy?

All people and all societies need charity to survive. However, that charity shouldn't be so overwhelming and institutionalized that it discourages people from making good decisions.

I live four feet above sea level. I know the risks, and I accept them. I find it unreasonable that anyone else should bear the burden of my choices. After Katrina, I lost nearly all my possessions and "important" documents, but I was perfectly healthy and was able to help family, neighbors and fellow citizens cut their way out. For a period of time before we were able to return, my family and a million other people sorted out a bit of couch surfing. Those people who maintained a lot of positive goodwill with friends and family had a more comfortable camping trip than others. In the period before we could settle down the real task of digging out, I helped a private group from Seattle setup a computer network for refugees to access helpful sites like searching for missing relatives, sites that were run by private groups or individuals. Our other intention was to help them access government aid websites, but I saw very few people attempt to do this, and even fewer succeed at it. Mostly, bored children played web games, and I busied myself with making it harder for them to download spyware and viruses. It was a losing battle. People that can't help themselves generally can't be helped at all.

Katrina was when I stopped believing in the organizational capabilities of government. That was when I traded in Zinn's "A People's History" for Voegelin's "Modernity without Restraint."

The term you're looking for is "minority", which is used to denote any group that is not in the "majority". As you can probably imagine, this is a very slippery term with a very slippery definition. Generally speaking, the majority in America is usually defined as a person who is:

-White

-European in origin (particularly Western Europe)

-Protestant

-Male

-Heterosexual

There are many other characteristics that could be defined as "majority", however those are the most commonly used ones. Entire books have been written on the subject. The problem with using this approach is that it forces you to generalize a population of 300 million people, every last one of them a unique person.

I'd recommend you check out Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. He attempts to tell the story of America through the eyes of the "others". It is very controversial (as I'm sure replies to my post will prove), however I think you'd find it a decent jumping-off point.

First, I have a very US-centric perspective, so you may notice that in my recommendations. I'm just looking at my bookcase recommending anything I've read and enjoyed (if it's on my bookcase, I enjoyed it). I have a lot more books in boxes, so if you want more recommendations do let me know. Also, if you want more information on any of the books, feel free to ask me.

Books:

History of the World by J.M. Roberts

A Study of History by Arnold Tonybee

Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization by Bruce Thorton

The Story of Civilization - Will & Ariel Durant

Separated at Birth: How North Korea Became the Evil Twin by Gordon Cucullu

The Fall of Japan: The Last Blazing Weeks of World War II by William Craig

The Century of Revolution: 1603-1714 by Christopher Hill

China's Imperial Past: An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture by Charles Hucker

Middle East Patterns: Places, Peoples, and Politics by Colbert Held

Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Ian Bickerton

The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict by Walter Lagueur

A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas Madden

The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture 1880-1950

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn


The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X

The Second World War by Winston Churchill

Documentaries:

The World at War

Ken Burns: The Civil War

Civilisation: A Personal View

If you suspect that you're not getting the whole story from television, I'd suggest picking up Noam Chomsky. He literally wrote the book, Manufacturing Consent, on the propaganda model for analyzing the media. Maybe start with The Common Good or What Uncle Sam Really Wants. That last one was one of the catalysts that started my own ideological transformation around your age that led me to becoming a conscientious objector and leaving the USMC.

Admittedly, Chomsky is a leftist intellectual, a self described supporter of anarcho syndicalism and libertarian socialism, but then, a lot of thinking people gravitate to leftism. Einstein wrote a letter entitled, Why I am a Socialist-

>'The oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society. The members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties financed or influenced by private capitalists. Moreover, private capitalists control the main sources of information (press, radio, education).'

• Albert Einstein
  
  The majority of scientists, who are generally analytically gifted people, and whose daily job is essentially to understand and describe the nature of reality, are also political leftists. So maybe there is something to this very wide body of thought.
  
  At any rate, I think that you'll be hard pressed to make yourself more informed by watching TV. I second the notion others have proposed of reading up on history, and offer Howard Zinn's [A People's History of the United States] (http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-P-S/dp/0061965588/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342240464&sr=1-1&keywords=a+people%27s+history+of+the+united+states) as a counterbalance to some sanitized versions of history.
  
  Anyways good luck! Happy to answer any questions you might have!
  

You say that from your modern day perspective. I'm pretty sure the natives were content not having more than half their population wiped out (by conservative estimates) so their grand children could live on reserves and have 90+% of all their treaties broken.

It's easy to say in retrospect that it was worth it when you're separated by centuries, but I really don't think that during those 200 years (1491 to 1691 roughly) where they were being scalped, hunted, raped and the like they say 'man thank god those white men fixed our shitty country'.

He had many accounts as in many encounters, and various other pilgrims said the same. Read up about Columbus and the Arawak tribe for perspective.

>"They...brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance…. With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

Here's a book to read.

https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-P-S/dp/0061965588/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290192837&sr=1-1

Look up the Wampanoag and Plymouth Rock. That's another impressive example.

>he friendliness of the Wampanoag was extraordinary, because they had recently been ravaged by diseases caught from previous European explorers. Europeans had also killed, kidnapped and enslaved Native Americans in the region. The Plymouth settlers, during their desperate first year, had even stolen grain and other goods from the Wampanoag.

And you're calling me sloppy with your inability to properly capitalize, need for edits and lack of punctuation? I dunno man, I think my message is pretty clear.

Read the full text book
or enjoy the handy cartoon version. I have both, with HZ's signature on the title pages.

Old dead classical dudes are always good. I ransack Epicurus and Marcus Aurelius for good ideas and advice fairly regularly. There are some excellent secular philosophers and thinkers out there. I enjoy Sam Harris' work the most. One of my favorite reference books is The Portable Atheist, which is a collection of secular philosophers, edited by Hitchens.

To get a sense of your place in the universe, try to find an old full-color hardback copy of Cosmos.^1 For your place in the Human story, Guns, Germs, and Steel, and your place in the American story with A People's History.


[1] As a minor biographical note, I credit this version of Cosmos for getting me through horrible angsty teenager time.

Edit: Also, good question.

Be sure to read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States."

Sorry that Dream is one of the Santa like stories sold to youth -- especially those of enlistment age. Columbus came for the gold and the the glory. We've been following his mighty footsteps ever since.

It's just how we roll.
Read Zinn's People's History;
this shits on repeat.

Not sure what all the hate is about but I have a degree in Gender Studies and don't regret my education.

I recently finished Girls Like Us which is about sex trafficking and sexual exploitations of minors and learned a lot. It's also an engrossing read, which is always nice. I also recommend When Everything Changed and A People's History of the United States if you haven't read it before.

What always amazes me when people reply to something like this is that you seem so sure of yourself. Are you absolutely sure of the motivations of the founding fathers? How do you really know why they did one thing or another? History is not facts, it's 'furious debate'. Who first said that a republic was needed because democracy was too dangerous? Hmm. The founding fathers?

A couple of books that give some evidence to my original post:

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596913991

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-P-S/dp/0061965588/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321296433&sr=1-1

Some people love howard zinn, others hate him. it's really hard to know for sure what version of history is correct. But with all of the greedy and almost evil people in the world throughout history, do you really expect me to believe that these FOunding fathers were all white knights and only had the public's best interests in mind? Zinn quotes a few journals of people living in the colonies before the revolutionary war and they would say things like 'from one master to another, this revolution means nothing to me'. The rich merchants of the colonies wanted to get rid of british taxes and tariffs so they couldmake more money, how did the average person benefit from the revolutionary war? Why did they offer soldiers land upon the completion of the war? Wouldn't these soldiers fight for freedom from british tyranny just to be free? Why did they need more incentive?

The free trade book clearly states that MANY countries (I think he even said that all recent democracies did the same) set up voting restrictions so that the poor would not have too much political power.

As for the deep south... do you know that Kennedy originally did not want to sign the civil rights act? It's too involved to get into it here, but the mistake people make is thinking that the government passed the civil rights act and that they led the way. The reality is that the people demanded change and the government only passed the law after the public basically dragged the government along, kicking and screaming all the way. The government didn't fix anything, they reluctantly made the change official after the public demanded it.

The politicians are not pushing the US forward, they are holding it back. Id take my chances with the rabble.

Read this. Everything that's going on now? Nothing new.

It's pretty much always been this way.

Schools in different places have caught up with modern approaches of teaching history at different times. You're right if you are saying that some schools still teach a very skewed view of history. I would expect that schools in the west have been faster to adjust their curricula toward truthfulness than schools in less culturally diverse parts of the world, but that doesn't mean they are perfect. Schools in Muslim countries are probably even farther from perfect. The government in Saudi Arabia for example has plenty of money, so no excuse there, but people there seem to think that the west is just one big den of gambling, drinking, prostitution, and disco dancing 24/7, and their schools don't seem to be helping dispel that delusion.

I can't speak to what your school experience was, but in my schools we learned about a lot of the stuff you mention. For example, we read this (well, an earlier edition of it): http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-P-S/dp/0061965588/ which doesn't exactly shy away from the truth.

I'm not asking Muslims for anything as you seem to think, but I do want to challenge their bullshit. They think their Pedophile (pbuh) rode on a flying horse... I don't think so. They have a book that tells them to kill people, and they say it is perfect... I don't think so. Christians aren't perfect either; far from it. Nor are atheists, but they don't have holy books exhorting them to kill people.